Encore Question of September 27th, 2003.
Played at the Frog & Firkin in North York Ontario.

Answers:

Mark Knopfler

Eric Clapton

Keith Richards

Joe Walsh

Carlos Santana

Tonight I'm playing Playback with my three boards. Nick IAMINU and Doug (CRANKY) D have left before the game started and that leaves two boards on the bar besides my usual two. I've noticed that a stranger at the bar has been watching us play earlier and ask him to join me. He doesn't know how but the first two rounds of Playback with their fixed time 500 or 1000 point all-or-nothing scores are a good way to start. So Manesh DAN is the fourth board as I type in HOOPER in honour of the captain of the Canadian Women's World Cup soccer team.

My game so far had gone like this:
TuneUp...ROCKET...5000/5000...1st/4...my two boards win round with a last second switch leaving HOOPER
falling.
...........LITBOX...5000/5000...1st/4.
..........HOOPER...4500/5000...2nd/4.
OnBeat...ROCKET...14000/14000...1st/4...my three boards win round.
..........LITBOX...14000/14000...1st/4.
.........HOOPER...13500/14000...1st/4...9 right, 0 wrong! A few guesses by elimination and huge help from Manesh
on the name of Eminem/50 Cents' record label. I knew it wasn't Death Row but the other answers looked so
mainstream. Manesh told me later his logic was Universal just looked just like a music label. Hey it worked
and that one question's help would prove important later. I wasn't able to log onto Billboard.com today but had
a Billboard magazine a week behind their online version so that picked up some answers for me. I gave my
HOOPER board over to Manesh who was catching on to the way to play the game.
JukeBox...ROCKET...19134/20000...1st/6...my two boards win round.
...........LITBOX...19134/20000...1st/6.
Triviaoke...ROCKET...24556/28000...1st/7...my two boards win round.
...........LITBOX...24556/28000...1st/7...two -250s this round but they were on an Irving Berlin and a Tool lyric
so opposite ends of the musical spectrum.

Now the Encore answers come up. OK I know all these guys and the groups they play in. Everyone in for 50%? Yep.

Encore Question:...This 1979 album "Communique" was written entirely by this guitar guru.

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Hey I recognized this album before the answers came back on the screen. Was this a Mark Knopfler solo or Dire Straits album? (Be patient and I'll find out). Now we've got a 28 second wait. I should have a Top 20 Network score.

I win the game with the sychronized fingers of ROCKET and LITBOX both at 36834. I finish 6th on the Network Top 20 in all North America!(at our bar, I ranked 1st in all North America but my score was below some bar averages). I earn 3000+ Players Plus points for meeting this week's standard of 18000. The bar finishes 82nd in North America as we really needed a fifth board [ntn.com moved us up to 23rd of 1911 bars with a 27920 average]. I finish both 3rd and 4th as ROCKET on the bar's Hall Of Fame board for the best scores of the last 12 months.

Thanks to Manesh from New Jersey via India for the crucial OnBeat answer. The overall rankings list my two boards finishing 6th and 6th so that cheer in thinking I finished 1st lasted for about five seconds.

Other games:...I start the evening with 2,713,500 for ROCKET and 542,000 for LITBOX.
7:30pm...Countdown...ROCKET...2000/15000...3rd/4...500+ points...I'm 8431st in NA...bar is 1768th.
.........LITBOX...2000/15000...3rd/4...500+ points...I'm 8431st in NA...IAMINU wins. I'm here in time for the last two questions.
8:00pm...Countdown...ROCKET...10518/15000...1st/4...1000+ points...I'm 1997th in NA...bar is 1140th.
...............LITBOX...10509/15000...2nd/4...1000+ points...I'm 2004th in NA.
8:30pm...RetroTV...ROCKET...14085/15000...2nd/4...1000+ points...I'm 304th in Canada.
..............LITBOX...14069/15000...3rd/4...1000+ points...I'm 315th in Canada...bar is 349th in Canada...IAMINU wins. This was a repeat game from last week and I finished slightly worse but Richard and Bill weren't here. Hey I'm watching soccer!
9:00pm...Playback (see above).
10:00pm...Countdown...ROCKET...10861/15000...1st/6...1000+ points...I'm 2105th in NA...bar is 762nd.
............LITBOX...10861/15000...1st/6...1000+ points...I'm 2105th in NA.
10:30pm...Countdown...ROCKET...12715/15000...1st/4...1000+ points...I'm 111th in NA...bar is 714th.
............LITBOX...12715/15000...1st/4...1000+ points...I'm 111th in NA.

This afternoon I was at a soccer game as the local CPSL league has only one more week to go. So after the game it was a drive home where I watched the Canada vs Japan game in the Women's World Cup in semi-fast forward on the VCR so I could get out to the pub and play NTN trivia. Now after walking to the pub I could watch the second half on tape-delay with my big Canadian flag along with the uninterested bar patrons. I can say I walked along Yonge Street in Toronto wearing my flag over my coat on my own one-man parade on my walk home. OK it wasn't the 'downtown' part of the street that's famous but my northern suburb.

Next Saturday I should be in London Ontario (halfway between Toronto and Detroit) watching the CPSL soccer playoffs so I won't be around to defend my title.